90s alt rock

Grave Dancers Union: Unite and Fight!

soul asylum album cover — Soul asylum album cover

Find me a better band name than Soul Asylum and a more extraordinary album title than “Grave Dancers Union.” Go ahead; I’ll wait.

The 80s act that blossomed into a 90s alternative rock force held significant influence over droves of Gen Xers, even if Soul Asylum is not as cool to reference as Nirvana, Peral Jam, Blind Melon…or any other of their chart-sharing counterparts. Soul Asylum’s hit single “Runaway Train” was a massive success, reaching number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and winning a Grammy for Best Rock Song.

And perhaps that was the problem.

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A Love Letter to My 90s Stereo Systems

By Drew Rosen 2 Comments

I fall in love with inanimate objects.

Tennis rackets, pens, sneakers, watches, bicycles, sunglasses, and so on. It’s not exactly unconditional love; my emotions can lead these objects to hang around past their expiration dates.

So consider this article a love letter, an amorous note to the stereos that helped me grow as a person and made my heart go pitter-patter. Because when it comes to 80s/90s stereo systems, I’m all in!

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Forgotten 90s Alternative Rock Songs

By Drew Rosen 5 Comments

So much of 90s alternative rock has been forgotten, left behind to die on a pressed CD, or trapped inside an archaic MP3 player that is as worthless as a brick.

This is my running list of 90s alt-rock bands and songs that kick ass; the tunes that helped shape my soul–many of which, still get played in regular rotation all of these years later.

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Mother Love Bone’s “Chloe Dancer” Is Always With Me

By Drew Rosen 3 Comments

Almost 30 years later, and the opening piano notes of “Chloe Dancer / Crown of Thorns” still give me chills.

While most songs ebb and flow from the playlist of my life, Mother Love Bone remains a constant. When you find a song that still gives you the feels decades later, whisking you away to another time, another place, you hold on–tightly.

No band better bridges the 80s heavy metal era with the emergence of 90s grunge than Sub Pop rejects Mother Love Bone. MLB’s frontman, Andrew Wood, was a fucking legend, and in life and death, a pioneer.

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Confessions of a 90s Alt-Rock Ticket Scalper

By Drew Rosen Leave a Comment

It was an experiment rooted in greed that was destined not to end well.

As my teenage life became centered around live music, it was clear I needed additional income to support my concert addition. At an average price of $13 a ticket, plus that patented 35% Ticketmaster surcharge, how was this high school kid supposed to get by?

The formula I devised was straightforward: Buy a few extra tickets to a show I was planning to attend anyway, and sell them for enough profit to cover the expense of my ticket.

It was a win-win, making the mass-transit travel and early-morning West Coast Video trips (they were a Ticketmaster outlet and ill-fated VHS rental chain) a bit more tolerable.

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Third Eye Blind “Graduate”

By Drew Rosen Leave a Comment

I hate clichés. I go out of my way not to use them and not to be one. But clichés are ubiquitous for a reason. Sometimes they can’t be avoided, and sometimes, it can be enjoyable to become one.

So when I turned the volume to high in my forest green 1997 Saturn SC2 coupe and cued up Third Eye Blind’s Graduate, literally minutes after I actually graduated college, I knew exactly what the fuck I was doing.

Cliché Central.

I waited a long time to escape the halls of academia. And while I did enjoy college supremely more than my other educational endeavors, I had no problem waving goodbye and leaving higher ed in the rearview mirror. Not just on that day, but for the rest of my life.

So when Stephan Jenkins posed the question, “Can I graduate?!,” it sounded more like a demand than a quiz, and I could relate. I did the work, now let me the fuck out.

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90s alt rock

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